The Black Yonder

The ship broke out of warp in an instant, appearing to punch its way through the sky with the utmost of precision. Within a few more seconds it was gone again, flung deeper into the mechanism that was the stargate pinball machine. All along the approaches the ships came and went, zipping and shining like beacons in the night. CONCORD billboards and neon-lit exit signs illuminated the short stretch of black.

The darkness and loneliness formed a vast ceiling above him. The infinite waypoints seemed so far, so distant. He wanted to reach out into the endless mixture of everything that was before him. Killmails, camps, near misses, the destruction, the frozen corpses, the losses and the frustration. He couldn't reach it, yet it was all around him.

He rode the long deep-blue tunnels from system to system. Yellow and white lights dulled and slinked into one long row of light, their radiance dulled against the shadows beyond the light tunnel. He sped past space stations and planets, jutting out and looming into view like skyscrapers and then disappearing again behind him. He crossed wormholes with their shimmering brilliance long now a memory. He darted across that black plain like a frantic red bullet shot from a gun.

Deeper into the darkness, into the black yonder.

MB.